Trees

Any evergreen you select can be used as a live Christmas tree that can be planted and enjoyed for many years to come. We suggest selecting a tree you most want to have in your landscape.

After bringing the tree home, place it in a protected outdoor spot, such as the north side of the garage. Cover the roots with a bag of mulch to help prevent them from freezing. Mulching a couple of inches beneath the ball will prevent the tree from freezing to the ground. We also recommend placing a bale of straw or hay over the spot where you want to plant the tree to keep the ground from freezing. It really will!

Sometime before Christmas, bring the tree to your chosen spot to celebrate with. Place the root ball in a bucket or garden trug and water. Stash the mulch for later use. Keeping the tree indoors for three days is ideal.

After Christmas, bring the tree out to your planting spot. A spraying with Wilt-Pruf will keep the harsh winter temperatures from drying out the needles. Remove the straw and scrape off the sod. Dig the hole the exact depth of the root ball, no deeper, and two times wider. Plant the tree with the soil you just dug, adding only organic fertilizer to the soil. We use three handfuls of Pro-Gro by North Country Organics. Mulch with the mulch you stashed.

In the springtime, don’t forget this is a newly planted tree and it’s necessary to water it as needed. You can also add three more handfuls of Pro-Gro to the mulched tree ring.

Our Garden Center is happy to help and answer any questions you have. We carry a number of items mentioned above including: evergreens, mulch, bales of straw, rubber trugs, Wilt-Pruf, tools and gloves, Pro-Gro fertilizer, and more.

Avid gardeners know the gardening season isn’t over even as summer is winding down. In fact, it seems there’s just as much to do as in the spring, if not more! Here are a few tasks we make sure not to miss in the gardens at Horsford Gardens and Nursery:

The Vegetable Garden

Root vegetables like beets and carrots sweeten with cold weather.

After your final harvest pull up annuals such as tomatoes, peppers, and beans. Remove leaf litter to help prevent the wintering over of leaf-borne diseases. Leave root vegetables for harvesting later, and brussels sprouts until after the Thanksgiving meal. You can also leave kale plants, as they tolerate some frost.

Topdress cleaned beds with a light layer of compost. Once the bed is cleaned and prepped, it’s good to plant a cover crop to prevent erosion and weeds, to break up compacted soil, and to work into the garden later.

Some gardeners rototill their gardens in fall with the belief this brings insect eggs to the surface to perish. The following season you may see less bug issues but there is no guarantee.

Herbs and Annuals

Annual flowers and herbs last one season. After your final harvest and seed gathering pull up the plants and compost them. Woody perennial herbs such as thyme, savory and lavender don’t die to the ground so cutting them back late in the season can kill them. Herbs such as tarragon and lovage can be cut to the ground.

Perennials

A perennial is a non-woody plant that dies to the ground each fall while the roots persist through winter. New growth emerges in spring from the crown. Cutting back the entire perennial garden has become standard practice in recent years. There are pros and cons to this.

Skip cutting back perennials for winter interest and bird habitat

Pros: It looks tidy. You get a jump on spring garden chores. Rodents cannot hide under stems and dead foliage, or live off the crowns of plants such as hosta, geraniums and daylilies.

Cons: You’ve made the garden bare and unprotected from winter’s elements. Stems left standing will trap blowing leaves and falling snow. The layer of leaves and snow helps maintain a constant temperature and prevents intermittent freezing and thawing that can kill plants. Decomposed leaves are wonderful soil builders. Birds live on bugs in the summer, and seeds and berries all winter. Leaving your grasses and coneflowers standing provides a natural food source all winter.

Cut back hosta leaves in early October before they turn to mush after a frost. Set out rodent traps beginning in August when critters are preparing their nests for the long winter.

Trees

Protect your tree investment with a $2 tree collar!

If you have newly planted young trees, especially fruit trees, wrap plastic tree guards around the trunk from the ground up. Tuck the bottom end into the ground. This is your best method to prevent mice and voles from girdling the tree, and will be the best $2 you spend on your landscape.

Shrubs

Prune Hydrangea paniculata in fall or spring.

Prune plants that bloom on new wood in late summer or fall. Hydrangea paniculata, in particular, benefit from a sharp pruning that helps strengthen branches.

Shrubs that bloom on old wood, such as lilacs, should not be pruned in the fall. Doing so will remove all of next spring’s flowers.

Newly planted shrubs (and trees) should be well watered right up to frost. If winter is light on snowfall and spring is light on rainfall, resume supplemental watering in the spring.

Plants begin to “shut down” and prepare for dormancy in late August when the days shorten and evening temperatures cool. You should stop fertilizing and adding compost to plants at this time. Late season feeding can trick a plant into growing, especially if we are treated to an Indian Summer.

People often walk up to a Paperbark Maple growing in our fields and ask “What kind of birch is this?” They are always surprised by the answer, “It’s a maple!” Why the confusion? The Paperbark Maple is so named for its beautiful cinnamon-colored exfoliating bark. Huge curls peel back to reveal a lighter, rosy-brown inner bark.

Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum) was first introduced in the United States in 1907 by Ernest Henry Wilson who collected seedlings of the tree during a plant finding expedition in China. Two of these seedlings were planted at the Arnold Arboretum in Massachusetts where they are still thriving today. Between 1927 and 1945, seedlings were distributed to nurseries throughout the United States. The tree has become a popular specimen in American landscapes.

So why should you grow it? It has many appealing attributes beyond its gorgeous bark. This is a small tree, growing between 20-30 feet tall, with an interesting branch structure that does not require pruning to maintain. The small cut-leaf leaves are not typical of what one thinks of as a maple leaf. Rather, each leaf is comprised of three leaflets that are an attractive, lush green until late autumn when they turn a brilliant orange-red (a lovely subject for watercolor).

Paperbark Maples are easy to grow. They prefer average, well-drained soils in full sun or part shade. While they will be slower to mature, they will tolerate clay soils. Even though a Paperbark Maple does not compare in height or width to the Sugar Maple, it can still be considered a shade tree and is especially useful in small yards or as a focal point in a garden where it can be underplanted with perennials, short-growing shrubs, and bulbs.

Cinnamon-colored exfoliating bark provides year-round interestPaperbark Maple makes a great specimen or understory plantingPlant this year to enjoy fiery fall foliage this autumn

Vermont winters are not my favorite. Being shut in, separating indoors from outside is such a different way of daily living for me compared to the warmer months. In order to survive and stay sane, I make myself spend at least an hour outdoors every day no matter what the weather.

I live on a parcel of land that has both fields and woodlands. In winter the woods are most interesting to me. Every plant is stripped bare. Trees in all their rugged grandeur really catch my attention (as do the abandoned birds nests).

I started looking at tree bark more closely and realized that it is quite unique from tree to tree. Smooth, jagged, grooved, covered in lichen and fungus, peeling, dark and light. It is great inspiration for all sorts of art. I can see wallpaper, fabric patterns, felting designs, embroidery designs, carpets and more.

Yesterday on my woodland walk I snapped a bunch of photos which I am sharing here. If you want to learn more about the role of bark on a tree I suggest reading the following article; Bark has a lot in common with human skin by Joe Rankin.

The last photo is not taken in Vermont. I saw it as I was walking down a street in Lisbon, Portugal. My daughter thinks it could be the inspiration for camouflage cloth.

If you want to see the majestic Black Locust and Horse Chestnut that I photographed, you can come to Horsford Gardens and Nursery from April through December.